An ordered three-dimensional (3D) microstructure is an ordered 3D structure at the micrometer scale. Currently, polymer cellular materials that are mass produced are created through various foaming processes, which yield random (not ordered) 3D microstructures. Techniques do exist to create polymer materials with ordered 3D microstructures, such as stereolithography techniques; however, these techniques rely on a bottom-up, layer-by-layer approach which prohibits scalability.
A stereolithography technique is a technique that builds a 3D structure in a layer-by-layer process. This process usually involves a platform (substrate) that is lowered into a photo-monomer (photopolymer) bath in discrete steps. At each step, a laser is scanned over the area of the photo-monomer that is to be cured (polymerized) for that particular layer. Once the layer is cured, the platform is lowered a specific amount (determined by the processing parameters and desired feature/surface resolution) and the process is repeated until the full 3D structure is created. One example of such a stereolithography technique is disclosed in Hull et al., “Apparatus For Production Of Three-Dimensional Objects By Stereolithography,” U.S. Pat. No. 4,575,330, filed Aug. 9, 1994, issued Mar. 11, 1986, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
Modifications to the above described stereolithography technique have been developed to improve the resolution with laser optics and special resin formulations, as well as modifications to decrease the fabrication time of the 3D structure by using a dynamic pattern generator to cure an entire layer at once. One example of such a modification is disclosed in Bertsch et al., “Microstereolithography: A Review,” Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings, Vol. 758, 2003, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. A fairly recent advancement to the standard stereolithography technique includes a two-photon polymerization process as disclosed in Sun et al., “Two-Photon Polymerization And 3D Lithographic Microfabrication,” APS, Vol. 170, 2004, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. However, this advanced process still relies on a complicated and time consuming layer-by-layer approach.
Previous work has also been done on creating polymer optical waveguides. A polymer optical waveguide can be formed in certain photopolymers that undergo a refractive index change during the polymerization process. If a monomer that is photo-sensitive is exposed to light (typically UV) under the right conditions, the initial area of polymerization, such as a small circular area, will “trap” the light and guide it to the tip of the polymerized region due to this index of refraction change, further advancing that polymerized region. This process will continue, leading to the formation of a waveguide structure with substantially the same cross-sectional dimensions along its entire length. The existing techniques to create polymer optical waveguides have allowed only one or a few waveguides to be formed and these techniques have not been used to create a self-supporting three-dimensional structure by patterning polymer optical waveguides.
Three-dimensional ordered polymer cellular structures have also been created using optical interference pattern techniques, also called holographic lithography; however, structures made using these techniques have an ordered structure at the nanometer scale and the structures are limited to the possible interference patterns, as described in Campbell et al., “Fabrication Of Photonic Crystals For The Visible Spectrum By Holographic Lithography,” NATURE, Vol. 404, Mar. 2, 2000, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,698,331 (“Use of metal foams in armor systems”) and U.S. Pat. No. 7,128,963 (“Ceramic composite body, method for fabricating ceramic composite bodies, and armor using ceramic composite bodies”), which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety, propose blast protection material systems that incorporate random cellular ceramic or metallic foam as an energy absorbing layer. However, these patent disclosures do not provide an ordered micro-truss structure. The use of lattice (truss) materials for energy absorbing application is discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,382,959 (“Optically oriented three-dimensional polymer microstructures”); U.S. Pat. No. 8,197,930 (“Three-Dimensional Ordered Open-Cellular Structures”) application Ser. No. 11/801,908 filed on May 10, 2007; U.S. Pat. No. 8,320,727 (“Composite Structures with Ordered Three-Dimensional (3D) Continuous Interpenetrating Phases”) application Ser. No. 12/008,479 filed on Jan. 11, 2008; U.S. Pat. No. 7,687,132 (“Ceramic Microtruss”), application Ser. No. 12/074,727, filed on Mar. 5, 2008); U.S. Pat. No. 7,653,276 (“Composite Structures for Storing Thermal Energy”) application Ser. No. 12/075,033 filed on Mar. 6, 2008; Application Ser. No. 12/455,449 (“Micro-truss based energy absorption apparatus”) filed on Jun. 1, 2009; and U.S. Pat. No. 8,353,240 (“Compressible Fluid Filled Micro-truss for Energy Absorption”) application Ser. No. 12/928,947 filed on Dec. 22, 2010 which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety. Various micro-truss structures and methods of manufacturing micro-truss structures are described, for example, in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/455,449 (“Micro-truss based energy absorption apparatus”), which discloses a method of fabricating micro-truss structures having a fixed area; U.S. Pat. No. 8,367,306 (“Method of Continuous or Batch Fabrication of Large Area Polymer Micro-Truss Structured Materials”) U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/835,276, which discloses a method of continuously fabricating micro-truss structures according to a continuous process (e.g., a strip of arbitrary length); and U.S. Pat. No. 8,353,240 (“Compressible Fluid Filled Micro-truss for Energy Absorption”) U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/928,947, which discloses a compressible fluid filled micro-truss for energy absorption, each of which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
In designing these structures, a design tradeoff is often made between providing resistance against shear and compression forces.
Therefore, there is still a demand for lightweight materials that are capable of resisting both shear and compression forces and a material in which its resistance to shear forces and compression forces can be independently controlled during the design process.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person skilled in the art.